Latest Sound Politics: Ukrainian History Lesson
When we think of the Ukraine County Elections office, we think of the recent fiasco involving the 400 rejected provisional ballots corrected by weeping Democratic party officials, the 717 surgically enhanced haruspex ballots and the 336 magical mystery ballots that suddenly appeared during the first recount, not to mention the 561 573 595 723 magical mystery ballots from Gregoire precincts discovered in a samovar six weeks after the election, and the vote for "Christine Rossi" that was handed to Christine Not-Rossi. But that is only part of the story. Even before the latest meltdown, the Ukraine County Records and Elections office has long been a Chernobyl of waste, fraud, lax security and incompetence.
Ukraine County Politburo Chairman Larry Phillips is now pissing and whingeing that the Ukraine Elections office has made a once-in-a-lifetime error that accidentally disenfranchised Phillips and some other Democrats. Bring out the World's Smallest Violin. Phillips is a long-serving member of the Democratic Party machine that was supposed to have been overseeing the Ukraine Elections office all this time.
Here are just a few of the highlights of the astonishing incompetence and/or corruption that have taken place under Larry Phillips' watch --
Seattle Times, February 1998
"New-Computer Contract Sets Off County Squabble -- County Executive Calls Criticism From Gop Chairman A Case Of Sour Grapes"
in the middle of this political squabble is a $5 million project that, when finished, would affect all aspects of running county elections - from registering voters to tabulating the results.
Negotiations, which are in the final stages, would award the contract to Phoenix-based Global Election Systems, said Larry Alcantara, director of King County's Records and Elections Division.
Of concern, Davis said, is Global's main subcontractor on the project, Chicago-based Prism Systems. Davis said Prism has left a trail of dissatisfied customers. One customer, Essex County, N.J., is considering legal action because of start-up delays.
The Stranger, September 1999
"LOST AND FOUND: A Year's Worth of Missing Files Raises Questions about King County's Election Commission"
Earlier this summer, Julie Anne Kempf, the county's Assistant Superintendent of Elections, turned up a set of documents that had been missing since November 1998. She claimed that the records -- monthly reports from King County's 33rd District Democrats -- had been in the office all along, but that they had been misfiled. Kempf's statement wouldn't have warranted a second look, except that the woman who was in charge of filing the reports in the first place is Kempf's mother, the 33rd District Dems' treasurer, Lucille Kempf. Julie Anne Kempf's sudden "discovery" of the errant documents has raised eyebrows among people familiar with the situation. They say Kempf may be pulling a fast one on state regulators (even going so far as to backdate the records) in order to cover her mother's behind.
Seattle Times, November 2000
" Election computer system isn't ready"
Less than a week before the biggest vote in King County history, the county elections office is still relying on a 12-year-old computer system to manage its voter-registration files, despite having spent $2.5 million to replace it.
King County and Global Election Systems of McKinney, Texas, were supposed to have installed a new election-management system by 1999. But problems customizing programs to meet the county's needs, and numerous elections that kept vendors and elections offices busy, have delayed the project's completion, now scheduled for the middle of next year.
Seattle Post-Intelligencer, October 2002
"Some voters still waiting on mail-in ballots"
A week before the general election, many King County voters still had not received their mail-in ballots last night -- despite assurances from county election officials that the delayed ballots were on the way.
...
Monday, county officials acknowledged that thousands of absentee ballots were a couple of days behind schedule. They assured that virtually all ballots should arrive by yesterday.
But many voters complained that didn't happen.
Seattle Post-Intelligencer, July 2003
"County making another effort at ballot reforms: New computerized system and hiring of elections personnel will be expensive"
Worried that King County's glitch-prone elections operation could face a catastrophe in the 2004 presidential election, the County Council is pushing County Executive Ron Sims to speed up reforms in the system.
After ballot foul-ups in three elections since last fall, the county is facing a 2004 election that could present a host of problems for the county's obsolete computer system
...
Council budget Chairman Larry Phillips, D-Seattle, said the reforms are critical to restore public confidence in "the most public of all public endeavors by government."
...
Sims has requested money for a number of election-system upgrades. But council staff analysts said in a report that Sims' request didn't "adequately address the need to expeditiously replace the voter-registration (database) system which has been a root cause of the ballot problems experienced in the past few elections."
Seattle Times, September 2003
"Elections chief tightens vote security"
[Dean] Logan said he decided election security was a "legitimate issue" after internal [Diebold] company e-mail was posted on the Internet and discussed in a Salon.com article Monday.
The memos appeared to support reports by Renton Web journalist and author Bev Harris that election results on Diebold's GEMS software could be altered by someone using its underlying Microsoft Access software without leaving a trace in the GEMS audit log.
"Right now you can open GEMS' .mdb file with MS-Access, and alter its contents. That includes the audit log," wrote Ken Clark, an employee of Diebold Election Systems, in an October 2001 e-mail.
...
Logan said he has looked into a comment in one Diebold memo that said Access has been used a number of times to make "end runs" around the GEMS database. "King County is famous for it," one employee wrote in 2001.
Seattle Times, February 2004
"2 felons' roles in county elections questioned"
Two convicted felons' roles in running elections in King County have raised new questions about the adequacy of safeguards to protect the integrity of elections.
County officials are close to signing a deal to buy an off-the-shelf voter-registration system nearly two years after rejecting one designed by a software-development team led by one of the felons.
...
County election officials were unaware of convicted embezzler Jeffrey W. Dean's criminal background when he was named in 1999 to lead an outside team that would design a computer system for managing elections. The county abandoned the system almost three years later, saying the computer software didn't do what it was supposed to.
Dean, who used his computer savvy to cover up his embezzlement of $465,341 from a Seattle law firm in the 1980s, was given keys to the election offices on the fifth floor of the King County Administration Building. And he had unrestricted access to the elections office's high-security computer room where votes are tallied.
...
Dean, who began printing ballots and handling absentee mailings in the mid-1990s, found a new way to put his computer expertise and his election savvy to work when Global Election Systems asked him for help.
...
Voter View, as the system was known, was supposed to have been tested and accepted by the county in February 1999. But two months later Global pulled the initial subcontractor off the job and turned the project over to Dean.
Elections watchdog group "Black Box Voting", [scroll down to entry of November 3, 2004]
a [public documents request] filed in King County, Washington on Sept. 15, following the primary election six weeks ago, uncovered an internal audit log containing a three-hour deletion on election night; “trouble slips” revealing suspicious modem activity; and profound problems with security, including accidental disclosure of critically sensitive remote access information to poll workers, office personnel, and even, in a shocking blunder, to Black Box Voting activists.
[the produced documents contain indications of precisely the sort of audit log deletions cautioned about in the Seattle Times article of September 2003]
And the rest, as they say, is history.
Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at 12:25 PM | Comments (10)
Categories: 2004 Governor's Race , King County Government |
